


heart's never quite in tune with everything i do

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 22:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18669916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: “Look, I know it’s stupid, okay. It’s just… I worked really hard on this.”“You hated my agghiotta di lumache,” he points out, “and I spent a whole day making that.”She waves a vague, dismissive hand in his direction. “That’s different. You know how I feel about soup. And snails.” She looks at him pointedly to add, “And it’s the same damn way everybody else feels about snails.”Rebecca’s first real writing gig, predictably, does not go to plan.





	heart's never quite in tune with everything i do

Greg may be a changed man but underneath all that he’s still Greg—she’s learning to take what he has to say with a forgiving grain of salt, but it doesn’t quite stop the sting whenever he delivers a particularly strong dose of cynicism. 

Greg hates a lot of things, so of course radio jingles would be one of them. 

“It’s… very catchy,” he amends off her disappointed pout once she’s finished reading it aloud. “I liked the end.”

“You liked the end,” she repeats, managing to sound vaguely amused, though she can’t help but bristle a little underneath. “As in the part where it was over—that was your favourite part?”

His face flickers through a few expressions before he settles on chagrined. “Uh-huh. That section resonated with me, for sure.”

It’s forty minutes out from the Serrano’s lunch hour, and Greg is flitting about the dining area, straightening tablecloths and inspecting cutlery, forcing her to weave in and out between the tables in his wake to keep up. She can tell she’s made him anxious in the way she always does when she makes it clear he’s not giving her the reaction she wanted, and he’s dealing by channelling it into a very specific brand of perfectionism that’s going to be appreciated by approximately no one.

“Look, I know it’s stupid, okay. It’s just… I worked really hard on this.”

“You hated my _agghiotta di lumache_ ,” he points out, “and I spent a whole day making that.”

She waves a vague, dismissive hand in his direction. “That’s different. You know how I feel about soup. And snails.” She looks at him pointedly to add, “And it’s the same damn way everybody else feels about snails.”

“Yeah,” he concedes. “West Covina was kind of on your side with that one.”

“And it was, like, _really_ hard to find the right word to rhyme with craniosacral.”

“I appreciate that. And your choice of myofascial was truly inspired.”

“See—you like wordplay. And what’s a jingle but wordplay, set to music?”

Greg hums, noncommittal. “Hey, it’s not my thing, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do a good job. I just…”

She frowns. “You just what?”

“Well, you know,” Greg says, then tilts his head in a way that suggests he’s expecting her to already be on the same page.

“No,” she says, widening her eyes at him. “I don’t know.”

He pauses in his table setting to sigh and straighten up and finally face her, looking for all intents and purposes like he’s already regretting treading onto this particular minefield. “Okay, I just thought you’d think that was kind of, I don’t know, selling out.”

“Selling out?”

The words catch her off guard, hitting her like a blunt force trauma to the upper chest and radiating inwards and making it hard to breathe for a second, but kind of squeezing somewhere near her heart, too.

Spending so long on something she’d been keeping to herself and then opening up to share it with the world at that open mic night had been terrifying, sure—but letting someone else in, to shape that special part of her into something they wanted her to say… that had been a different kind of scary altogether. If she’s honest, something about it _had_ felt a little dirty, a little too much like compromising an inner voice she’d spent so long trying to figure out.

“You know… marketing,” Greg expounds with a dramatic shudder, apparently sensing he’s overstepped in some way and trying to make light of it. “This is your Dream, with a capital D, and it’s so heartfelt, and pure. And advertising is such a dirty word. It’s just so… unsavoury.”

She’d be lying if she said his comment hasn’t left her unsettled, but she’s in a place where she feels better equipped to process that, now; it doesn’t leave her bruised and raw the way it would have done a year or two ago, and she files the insecurity behind the button he's managed to unwittingly push away to be examined later. 

“Not to me. I love advertising. Yeah. I owe my life to advertising. Lest you forget, I _moved_ here for a butter commercial.”

“Oh really. The way I remember it, despite many ongoing protests, you moved here for Josh Chan, only to have a spanner thrown in the works by the charming down and out bartender you bumped into along the way.”

“Funny,” she says, fighting the hint of a grin that threatens to twitch at the edges of her mouth. “Charming? That’s what we’re calling it, now? That’s what you think that was?”

“Uh-huh. Pants, as I recall, were repeatedly charmed off.”

“Huh. Now that you mention it, the pants part may ring a few bells.”

He smiles at her, warm and open in the way old Greg was rarely capable, and she doesn’t have to try particularly hard to return it. 

“Hey,” he says, dragging the dishcloth off his shoulder and dropping it down onto the nearest surface before stepping closer, quiet and earnest, as if he’s discarded all the prickly parts of him she could potentially find unpalatable with it. “What I should have said is, congratulations. Look at you go, huh?”

“Thank you,” she says, the suggestion of a curtsy woven into the way she dips as she retrieves her purse from a bar stool. “And speaking of going…”

“Oh, please don’t do that. I wasn’t kicking you out.”

“You say that like I’d listen if you were,” she mocks. “But really, my presence is required at my own charming eatery establishment, so alas, I must bid you adieu.”

She’s halfway out the door before she thinks better of it and ducks back in, rounding the front counter to swipe a mint from the complimentary bowl.

“Those are for the paying customers!” Greg yells at her retreating back.

She makes an affectionate but rude hand gesture over her shoulder in response.

 

* * *

 

She sends Nathaniel the Soundcloud link before it goes live and makes him Skype her while he listens, just so she can see his reaction in real time—or, more accurately, on an approximate ten second delay.

“Is this really necessary?” he groans, the angle of him shifting wildly as he fusses with positioning the camera to fit himself adequately inside the frame. “I’d tell you the truth. I wouldn’t humour you.”

“Ah,” she counters, jabbing a finger at him electronically, “yet here you are, humouring me. So now how can I trust anything but your most primal reactions, unfiltered by your WASP-y predilection for politeness?”

“Primal?” he echoes, amused. “I thought this was supposed to be a G-rated radio commercial.”

Their connection starts to lag almost laughably, the movement of his mouth not remotely in sync with the words he’s saying, and it turns out to be a good excuse to stare at the lower half of his jaw for more time than would be considered polite otherwise. He hasn’t shaved recently, and Rebecca can’t help but let her gaze linger on the half-beard he’s sporting, at the way it makes him look rugged and loose and free.

She has to tamp down on the impulse to reach out and trace her finger across the screen.

Her laughter trails off and she pauses, dropping her cheek down into her palm and leaning hard onto her left elbow. “Hey,” she says. “It’s good to see your face.”

It takes an agonising moment to reach her, but she doesn’t miss the split second of surprise that flits across his features before his mouth stretches into a slow, shy smile.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and then he clears his throat and drops his eyes away from the lens of the camera, presumably to navigate to the video she’s sent him.

He doesn’t play up his responses to it at all, and she thinks she loves him a little bit for it—for forcing her to fight to catalogue every micro-expression as it morphs into being. His shoulders shake intermittently with twitches of breathy laughter, and on two separate occasions she catches his eyebrows canting inwards and upwards at the end of a line.

“It’s very—”

“Irreverent?” she offers. “Unrefined? Juvenile? Unfit for the public ear?” 

“— _you_ ,” he finishes. “It just… it just reminds me of you.”

She thinks he might sound a tiny bit homesick, and _oh._ She’s not sure she needs to fish for any more reassurance than that.

“You don’t think it’s selling out?” she makes herself ask.

He shrugs, as she finds out probably a good fifteen seconds after the fact. “I mean, maybe. But who cares? What even is ‘selling out’—what does that even mean? It’s something that you did because it allowed you to keep doing more of what you love, right? Where’s the shame in that?”

Nathaniel has a knack for telling her things she needs to hear whilst simultaneously being completely blind to the real reason it matters—he doesn’t share her love of musical theatre, doesn’t see anything beyond a silly song, and she’d be willing to bet the entirety of her admittedly slim pretzel shop profits that he has no clue why she’s putting so much credence on a thirty second stretch of air time.

Still, he gets that it’s in some way important to _her_ , and it’s enough to pique his interest.

“Anyway, if you ask me, the on—”

The sound cuts off abruptly, the start of of his sentence garbled and the picture deteriorating into a mess of ugly pixels accordingly that has her slapping the side of her laptop in frustration.

“Nathaniel? Hey, Nathaniel—you still in there?”

After struggling to right itself the call disconnects, the frozen picture of Nathaniel—hand halfway in stroking across his stubbly chin—disappearing and leaving her staring back at herself just in time to catch her own shoulders sagging in disappointment on the screen.

Her laptop chimes with a message.

_Sorry. Connection dropped out. The internet in my office is inconsistent at best. I should probably get back to work, though. Some other time?_

She types out and backspaces several variations on a response ranging from slavish to sentimental before she settles on—

_No problem. Thanks for listening. Chat again soon x_

 

* * *

 

“Well, I for one just _love_ it,” Darryl gushes, pressing a hand to his heart. “And Hebby already practically knows every word off by heart, even if she can’t properly pronounce any of them.” He frowns for a moment, then adds, “Come to think of it, I’m not sure _I_ can pronounce all of them—you slipped a couple of tricky ones in there—but I _did_ look up some of the definitions on the Google, so there you go. Your work is entertaining _and_ educational.”

“Darryl,” Rebecca says, bemused, “I know it’s on free to air radio, but I’m not sure it’s exactly appropriate listening material for a toddler. I mean, there’s some blatant innuendo in there you probably don’t want your kid parroting back to other people in the playground, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Innuendo? What innuendo? I didn’t pick up on anything like that.”

“Oh boy.”

Not willing to touch that conversation with a ten foot pole, she settles for turning her attention to the small child currently clawing at her lower pant leg. 

“Hey there, half pint,” she says, taking the hint of Hebby’s outstretched hands and hauling her up onto her hip by the armpits, a technique she’s managed to master at some point over the last two years.

“Up,” Hebby announces.

“This is about as ‘up’ as you’re gonna get with me, kiddo. We can’t all be beanstalks like your dad. Oof, you are getting _heavy_. But I mean that in a purely observational, nicest possible way,” she self-corrects, “because issues with body image can start at a very young age.”

She’s finally reached the point where she can go an entire coffee date with Darryl without being hit by a flutter of anxiety regarding the emotionally fraught origins of his second-to-youngest daughter, and if she’s completely honest, Darryl’s characteristically eager amalgam of his life with April’s was ultimately what made it easier for the idea of her to settle in her mind. She doesn’t have to look at Hebby and see all that desperation anymore—instead she just sees a girl that has the good fortune of being half one of her favourite people, and one of four of the luckiest kids she knows to boot.

“It’s on again!” AJ calls out tonelessly from behind the counter, voice dripping with exasperation.

Pulling Hebby’s head against her chest and dutifully covering the girl’s exposed other ear with her free hand, Rebecca all but skips into the kitchen where AJ’s got the radio turned up louder than they would usually allow, just in time to catch the opening notes that are so second nature to her by now she hears them in her sleep and hums along.

Once it’s finished Darryl beams at her in pride the way she once would have longed for her father to have done, and even though it’s completely over the top she lets herself bask in it, hiding her answering grin in Hebby’s halo of chestnut curls.

“Oh, it’s like it gets better every time I hear it,” he tells her. “It just makes me want to go out and get, like, six different massages!”

“Precisely how many times are you going to make me listen to that?” AJ asks, rolling his eyes as he checks on the pretzels. “It’s almost like you don’t have a copy of it on your computer. That you can listen to any time you want.”

She unhands Hebby’s ears and pretends to steal her nose. “Until it gets old,” she coos in her baby voice, cheeks aching from smiling so wide.

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god, Mom—you have _got_ to stop reading the Daily West Covina. You know, I read a Vox article that said reading tabloids accelerates aging.”

For much of her life, Rebecca’s relationship with her mother has been volatile, at best. And maybe they won’t be dressing up in matching sweatpant-jumpsuits and playing Twister again anytime soon, but she’s learned to appreciate Naomi’s at least been _trying_ to respect Rebecca’s wishes when it comes to keeping her interference in her daughter’s life to a nice, bare minimum. It doesn’t mean their topics of conversation don’t regularly skirt the boundaries of what Rebecca would consider polite interest in her personal activities, though, and it definitely doesn’t do away with the Pavlovian urge Rebecca’s eyeballs have to roll clean out of their sockets at every second thing her mother has to say.

“I didn’t see it on the Daily West Covina. Your friend with the impeccable wardrobe shared it on the Facebook—you know the one, that’s married to that Ellen look alike with the overly agreeable disposition. Such a tasteful, modern wedding they had—all the women on the charity board were so jealous when I secured an invite.”

Rebecca massages her temples, weary. “You’re friends with Valencia on Facebook?”

“Of course I am, Becca. How else am I supposed to have the slightest clue what’s going on your life? Maybe if you called your mother once in awhile she wouldn’t be forced to find out her daughter’s embroiled in yet another public embarrassment by stalking her friends on social media.”

“Public embarrassment? That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? Mom, I wrote a short jingle for a local massage parlour. I know it’s not exactly all the glamour of _Mad Men_ , but it paid well for what it was, and—”

“Massage parlour?” Naomi cuts in, brusque. “Is that what they call them out in that sun-bleached, cultural wasteland of a town you live in? Honestly, Rebecca. I know you like to think of yourself as liberated woman, but for once in your life, could you consider the optics?”

Pausing to assess her surroundings and confirm that no, evocative as the mental image was, she has not _actually_ melted into a sentient puddle of exasperation on her kitchen floor, Rebecca drags herself out of her chair and over towards the armchair where she’d discarded her laptop the evening before. It’s occurred to her, not for the first time, that there may be something to the gaping chasm dividing her mother’s perspective and her own, and the stirrings of suspicion start to prickle into dread as she flips her computer open.

“Oh no,” she says as soon as she sees the top story on her Facebook feed.

“As per usual, you’ve thought of no one but yourself. I’m not as young as I used to be, Rebecca! I don’t have the stamina for scandal that I used to.”

“Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no no no.”

“I think I’ve been pretty understanding, what with you in and out of jail, cycling through unprofitable careers like you do unmarriageable men—”

Jerking out of her sinking stupor, Rebecca frowns. “Okay, Mom, you know what? We’ve talked about this, and I’m not listening to your biting commentary on my life choices anymore. I love you, but I have to go, and I will talk to you later, when you’ve thought of something nice to say.”

She terminates the call without looking, distractedly discarding her phone into the cushions beside her, no doubt to be forgotten about only to send her panicking later. For now, though, she’s more concerned with turning up the volume on the local Daily Show segment Valencia’s posted from her profile.

Then she takes a deep breath, opens FaceTime and clicks on Valencia’s name.

It’s Beth’s face that eventually swims into view, her blonde hair presumably mussed from sleep.

“Hey, Beth,” Rebecca chirps, hating the way her voice drags and pitches higher in her mounting panic. “Did I wake you? It’s unreasonably early here but I thought I was safe bugging V given the time difference.”

“No, we’re up. Just enjoying a lazy Sunday. At least we would be, if somebody knew how to relax.”

The camera swivels suddenly, granting Rebecca a view of what she can only infer is Valencia’s yoga pant-clad rear end as she strides through her sardine can kitchen with the unmistakeable air of determination that imbues mostly everything she does. 

“One second,” the butt says. “I’m almost done.”

“She’s picking out paper plates,” Beth clarifies, twisting back into the frame.

“Please, I am not ‘picking out paper plates’. I’m making a very important decision regarding the statement we want to make regarding our carbon footprint,” Valencia corrects, off-camera, and Rebecca feels like she’s getting carsick from the frequently whirling picture as her friend snatches up the computer and her bright smile slides suddenly into view. “Environmental impact is very in vogue right now. Hey, girl. What’s up?”

“Hey, Valencia. So about the video you just posted—”

“Of your song on the news? _So_ cool, right? Elena forwarded it to me last night. I haven’t actually had a chance to watch it yet, since I’ve been busy researching all these disposable tableware options—”

“I did wonder about that, because Valencia? It’s, uh… it’s not great. It’s pretty terrible, actually. And I’d kind of prefer it if the amount of people being exposed to it could remain as limited as possible.”

“Well I already shared it on my Facebook, and my Twitter, _and_ my Instagram. That thing’s getting some views.”

Rebecca fights back a frustrated noise, reforming it until it comes out something more like a strained laugh. “Ha-ah-ahhh. So I feel like there’s a teaching moment, here, about blindly propagating media you haven’t actually critically assessed for yourself, but I’m going to table that for hot sec and ask if you could maybe, I don’t know—what is the opposite of sharing? Can we de-share it? Print-slash-post a retraction? Is that a thing?”

Valencia frowns. “I mean, I could delete it, I guess.”

“Delete it! Yes—that’s what we should do. Delete it. Remove all traces of it from the face of the earth.”

“Fine,” Valencia sighs. “Though I don’t understand what could be so bad about it.”

“I’d tell you to watch it, before you delete it, and find out for yourself, but that’s an extra two minutes of exposure I’d rather it not have, so I’m going to hang up, and you’re going to scourge that post from every possible internet platform, and I’ll fill you in on the details later. K, thanks, love you, byeeee.”

Rebecca drags the laptop dejectedly shut with the bridge of her nose.

 

* * *

 

“So basically, what I’m saying is, I should’ve stuck to writing theme songs to the imaginary crime show I’ve concocted for the two of us in my head that you _still_ won’t admit you’re amused by,” she finishes in a breathless rush, folding her hands in her lap.

She exits her Friday morning therapy session with Dr Akopian theme song sign off still pending, but she does come out to a voicemail from Josh Chan, of all people.

She and Josh haven’t spoken all that much since he moved out—they still run into each other around town, occasionally, and she never hesitates before slamming the like button on any of his Facebook posts, the sentiment dependably reciprocal, but they don’t exactly go out of their way to keep in touch, either. She feels a pang in her chest if she stops to think about that for too long—the way the confusing potential for revisited romance kind of ruined what had up until that point been a reaffirming, rekindling of friendship—but it it is what it is. 

The voicemail is of Josh singing her infamous ditty back to her, followed by an enthusiastic congratulations and insistence that he’s going to make it his new ringtone, just as soon as he figures out how. She finds herself giggling in delight despite herself, and her thumb hits redial as she slides into her car before she can convince herself otherwise.

“Hey, Rebecca!” Josh crows at her when he answers on the second ring.

“Hey, Josh. Long time no see. Other than the picture of your scantily clad body I was blessed with gazing upon when I called you just now. Nice profile pic, by the way. Is that an official Fett Regoso filter?”

“Yup—currently in fifth place by likes and shares in their social media campaign. Rosa told all the kids at the drop-in centre they should 

vote for me—well, the ones that are old enough that it’s not, like, weird—and then they all took turns on the computer doing it. Really boosted my hits.”

“Sounds like as good a use of taxpayer resources as any,” Rebecca quips.

“Yeah! You should come by sometime, I think you’d really like it. You could even run like, a songwriting class, or give legal advice like you used to do for those women at the jail. Everyone would be totally down with something like that.”

Coming from anyone else she only crossed paths with a handful of times a year, the suggestion would’ve rung false, but she knows Josh isn’t one for empty platitudes—his offer is earnest, and she can’t help but smile.

“Aw, Josh. That’s really sweet. And I’d love to, if I can squeeze it in. I have been kind of bummed about not having the time to volunteer at the jail lately. Though my knowledge of the law is probably a little rusty—the half of my brain that isn’t permanently preoccupied with song lyrics is pretty much covered in salt and flour.”

“No way, Becks. You’re the smartest person I know. You went to _Harvard_. Plus, you wrote a really dope song that gets played on the radio, so now you’re definitely also one of the coolest.”

There’s a small rose garden inside of her that will probably always be predisposed to blooming in response to every ray it’s afforded by Josh Chan, and that steady warmth blossoms through her now, simultaneously making it all the worse that she has to be the bearer of bad news and softening the blow.

“Yeah, about that—it’s not quite as cool as one might initially assume, it turns out.”

She can practically picture his confused grin. “Wait, you’re saying one of your songs getting played on the radio _isn’t_ a big deal?”

She tilts her head, searching for the right words. “Well, it’s not really a song, for starters—it’s a jingle—and I guess you could still say it’s a big deal. Just… another kind of big deal, is what I guess I’m getting at.” After a confused stretch of silence she elaborates, “There’s this whole scandal with the business I wrote it for, and then they played the song on the news when the story broke, and now there’s this thing with some of the lyrics that were supposed to be ironic, but in retrospect _aren’t_ quite so ironic, and you _know_ how fast stuff travels in this stupid town with the stupid Daily West Covina, and… honestly, it’s a disaster, Josh. This entire endeavour has been a disaster.”

“Aw, Becks, don’t be like that. Any publicity is good publicity, right?”

“God, how I wish that were true,” she moans, leaning forward to smack her forehead several times against the steering wheel. 

“Well, who cares what other people think your words mean. People think words mean things they don’t all the time. Like me—I always thought that a ‘bookworm’ was some kind of bug that lives in libraries, but it turns out it just means someone who likes to read.”

“Uh-huh,” she says after a pause. “That’s a tricky one.”

Her phone vibrates against the side of her face and she pulls back to a text from AJ, cheerfully informing her they’re about to run out of napkins.

“Listen Josh, I’ve got to go. But it was so nice to hear from you. Really.”

“Back atcha! And I meant what I said—you’re welcome at the centre any time. On Tuesday afternoons, we do magic.”

“Thank you,” she says, mouth pulling concave in its sincerity. “That really means a lot.”

When her jingle comes on the news bulletin three minutes into her drive back to Rebetzel’s, she switches to aux, unperturbed, the residual optimism from her conversation with Josh buoying her through.

 

* * *

 

“So the bit about the—”

“Yup.”

“Where you thought you were using the genre to just kind of poke fun at the—”

“Yup.”

“Oh,” Paula says, scrunching up her face. “ _Oh._ ”

“Yup.”

“Oh,” Heather says, catching on. “I see what they’re saying. Yeah, that’s… super unfortunate, in hindsight. Just, like, a definite, all-round bummer.”

Rebecca sighs, knocking back her glass of complimentary water like it’s a shot of vodka and grimacing accordingly. “The thing is, I was really proud of what I wrote,” she says. “It was catchy, and funny, and clever. But it wasn’t _for_ me, so the changes they made, they had every right to make them. But it was so hard, you know? It took me so long to work out who I was, and find my voice. Compromising what came out of it kind of felt like a failure. And now there’s an entire _town_ of people passing judgement on that, for reasons that have nothing to do with me. It just hardly seems fair, is what I’m saying.”

Paula rubs a soothing hand across her back while Heather slides her phone back to her across the table, wincing in sympathy.

“Hey, at least you already got paid, huh?” Paula encourages with a nudge of her elbow. “There’s that. So you can get that new software you wanted, and forget about all this other nonsense, and just focus on doing what makes you happy.”

“Yeah. There’s like, other day spas in the sea,” Heather agrees.

It’s been awhile since they’ve been able to squeeze in a lunch like this, what with Rebecca’s increasingly eclectic schedule, Paula’s crazy hours and Heather’s cohabitation with her husband a whole other city away. Not that they don’t all keep in regular contact—because they do—but Rebecca’s pretty sure the last occasion the three of them managed to be in the same room for an entire meal was Heather’s 30th birthday nearly three months back, when Valencia had last been in town. Which, coincidentally, she muses as their coffee orders arrive at the table, is just about the same night she last…

“Oh,” she sighs, gazing longingly after the barista and adopting a wistful air. “When that polite, bearded and bespectacled, ponytailed young man placed this very economically sized porcelain mug in front of me just now, it may have come to my attention that I haven’t had sexual intercourse in a really long time.”

“Uh-huh,” Paula says wryly, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Because that realisation never once crossed your mind when the red eye from Guatemala landed last Tuesday.”

“I should text Miles, right?” Rebecca asks, ignoring her, attention firmly fixed on her phone. “He’s like, the healthiest option in this scenario, right?”

“Is Miles the grocery guy?” Paula whispers to Heather.

“No, you’re thinking of Marty. Miles is the guy from the copy store where she prints her librettos, that she let _refill her binder_ that one time,” Heather corrects with a snort. “It makes sense that you’d get them confused because she went on sad, lame dates with both of them, their names start with M and they both went to Harvard.”

“High aspirations, the lot of us,” Rebecca says, still caught in a cringe from Heather’s stationery supply themed innuendo. “And those dates were not lame and sad. We went bowling and to karaoke.”

“Exactly.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes.

“Hey,” one of the passing patrons calls out, pausing beside their table en route to the bar. “Aren’t you that chick that wrote that—”

“Okay, move along, buddy,” Paula snaps, fending him off before he can finish with a broad shooing motion. “Radio’s a faceless medium, and you need to respect that.”

Rebecca only moans, dropping her head down into her hand as she stirs gingerly at her drink. “God, remember when I used to just be known as the Rooftop Killer? Those were the good old days.”

Heather hums her assent.

 

* * *

 

Paula takes her by surprise when she knocks on her door unannounced a week later, bearing gifts.

“I brought donuts,” she announces. “And champagne. Not just the cheap and nasty stuff, either—I’m a mid-range gal, now.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet. And after the week I’ve had, I could really use the drink. But what’s the occasion?”

She’s joking, if not somewhat confused, so she’s certainly not expecting it when Paula deposits her wares on the island bench only to turn and grab her by the shoulders, shaking her gently.

“Something you wrote got played on the radio. And the TV. _And_ went viral on the internet. And yeah, maybe they changed a few words and also turned out to be a disreputable business engaging in highly illegal practices, but honey—something from _your_ head is out there getting stuck in everybody else’s heads. And that is _huge._ Any day of the week. _”_

It takes a second to wash over her—the notion that they take her involvement back to something that should be celebrated, rather than damage controlled—but when it does, some of the sour taste the past week has left in her mouth starts to fade.

“Yeah,” Rebecca breathes, sagging against the counter in relief. “Yeah, it kind of is, right? I guess I never really had the chance to stop and let that part properly sink in, before all the other stuff.”

She pushes eagerly up onto a breakfast stool as her friend helps herself to some glassware, accepting the flute Paula pours for her in gratitude and clinking it obligingly against hers.

“And Cookie, you know this’ll all blow over in, like, another week, max, right? Because some idiot will skateboard naked off a rooftop or another sinkhole will open up in the middle of East Cameron during peak hour and nobody in this stupid town has the attention span to fixate on all those things at once. Your news will be old news before you know it. So you laugh about it, you cash the cheque, and you move on to the next bigger and better thing. Because I’ve had a glimpse of what you’ve got going on up there,” Paula says, reaching over to tap Rebecca gently on the temple, “and you are only just getting started.”

It feels heart-warmingly apt, having this conversation here with Paula now, in the very same spot in her kitchen that almost two years prior, a slightly on-the-nose-considering mural of a leaf-littered pathway as a backdrop, her best friend had stopped to ask her the very question that had set her on this whole unpredictable journey to begin with. 

There’s not a single part of her that regrets it.

“Thank you, for having your firm look into all that, by the way,” she tells Paula once they’ve migrated to the couch, champagne glasses and donuts in hand. “I know it didn’t technically have anything to do with me, but I still felt kind of indirectly responsible, you know?”

“Say no more,” Paula assures her with a shake of her head. “Those women are in the best possible hands.” After a beat she says, “That feels like an unfortunate turn of phrase, considering.”

“Yeah,” Rebecca agrees, downing the rest of her glass. “Tell me about it.”

 

* * *

 

When AJ comes home a few hours later, Rebecca’s lounging on the sofa with the last dregs of the champagne bottle, watching reruns of _The Nanny_ and clawing her way up the backrest to look at him when she recognises the song he’s whistling as he comes in the door.

“What? Girl, it is not my fault I’ve had to listen to you hammering out that tune every night for the past two months. I _wish_ I could get it out of my head. It’s exhausting. If the rent for this place wasn’t so absurdly low, I’d be demanding a curfew.” He pauses in shrugging out of his coat in the entryway to eye her with suspicion. “What are you getting weepy at?”

“My stupid music is stuck in your head,” she says, touched, “and I only recently stopped to realise that’s, like, actually a really, really cool thing.”

“We live and work together,” AJ points out in protest of the hug she insists on scrambling over to envelope him in. “Your keyboard has taken up permanent residence in both our communal kitchens. Everything you work on ends up in my head out of sheer osmosis.” He heaves out an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh that would make Heather proud. “That sentiment is kind of sweet, though, and you’re obviously drunk—so maybe I’ll let you have this one.”

“Good, because I’m taking it,” Rebecca says, sniffing, and pulls him even tighter.


End file.
